Well, Emil and I spent a few pleasant hours cruising around to open houses this afternoon. We did this because we saw a colonial advertised just a mile away from where we live now, and we wanted to see it because the picture in the paper was so attractive.

Got there, and discovered that the rooms were too small. There were lots of nice spaces in the house - a very cheery sunroom/workroom, bedrooms with really nice windows (two in each room), a fireplace in the living room, and so on. But we simply would not have been able to fit in the space; we have way too much stuff. And considering that the house was more expensive than our present house, there didn't seem to be much point - or fantasy value to it, either.

So then we headed out to Chelsea, where we saw an 1880s farmhouse. This one was substantially cheaper than our current house, and substantially bigger, too. I really liked it, although it was rough around the edges: Michigan (ie, dirt) basement, and wood subflooring (which is really not a big deal). There were two bedrooms downstairs and two up; it seemed clear that each child would get a downstairs bedroom (each of which had a bathroom attached), and we'd take the upstairs. The huge back yard was really nice; lots of garden space and room for a deck (maybe a sunroom?) off the back of the kitchen. If we actually knew for certain that we wanted a house in Chelsea, it would be my choice. The big drawback was the lack of a garage . . . we're getting pretty overstocked on cars, here, and although Emil allowed as how he could just put a tarp over the Midge, you could see he didn't really want to . . . giving up a garage would be a loss.

And anyway, I'm still not convinced that moving to Chelsea is a good idea. I'm not sure about the condition of the roads I'd have to travel in the winter, and I think living there would wreck Emil's commute; it would go from ten minutes to thirty, which is a jump.

Anyhow, we saw one more house. This one was built in the 20s, and had been completely updated. The updating was very tasteful - classy warm oak floors, moderne kitchen, yada, yada, yada. The charm had been updated right out of it. It had three decent-sized bedrooms, but not very many common spaces. Although the rooms were good-sized, the configuration was just wrong; in our present house, there are several places where people can go. We have the basement with its two computers, a TV area, exercise equipment, a place to tie flies, a darkroom, a root cellar, all in not very much space . . . and we have the sunroom, quite isolated from the living room; the TV can be on in the living room and it's possible to read and listen to music in the sunroom. And everyone has a bedroom (ours is the size of the apartment we rented on Oakhill, actually). (That was a really small apartment.) So although the house feels small at times, it also feels very livable.

Then we happened by Gonzalo and Lucy's house, and stopped to say hi. They were moving furniture around. They showed us this utterly cool little room that their younger daughter is now using; it's only about four feet high, so the mattress is on the floor and there are bookshelves all around . . . it looked like the inside of a large tent. Very cool! When I was eight, I would have loved it. I imagine that someday their grandchildren will love it, too.

So basically we spent the whole day imagining ourselves living in different places, which was really fun. The best part, though, was coming home and realizing that hey, living where we do is just fine with us, too . . .